Frank commentary from a retired call girl

The Forest for the Trees

One of the hallmarks of a panic is that you don’t realize it’s a panic when you’re in the middle of it. – Debbie Nathan

Twenty years after the end of the Satanic Panic, its last few victims are finally being released from prison and in some cases even declared innocent, an extraordinary measure because it requires an organ of the State declaring that its predecessor was not only wrong, but committed a grave injustice. In just the past few months we’ve seen the release of the San Antonio Four and Fran and Dan Keller; only one more victim of a strictly-Satanic case remains in prison, Frank Fuster in Florida. There were, however, other hysteria-tinged cases near the end of the panic whose prosecutors avoided “Satanic” language because they saw the writing on the wall, and some of those victims (like Joseph Allen of Ohio) are still slowly dying in cages. From the safe distance of a generation, reporters – some of whom are young enough to have been peers of the children forced by cops, prosecutors, and other fanatics to make horrible accusations – are now writing stories confidently declaring that the ritual abuse never happened and branding the hysteria a “witch hunt”. But while I obviously agree with them, I find it both sad and telling that not a one of these reporters so smugly declaring their predecessors gullible have dared to denounce their generation’s revival of the panic, “sex trafficking” hysteria. Last week, Slate published a column on the Kellers (and the panic in general) entitled “The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse”, and I’d like to share an excerpt with you. I don’t think you’ll need much imagination to see how this applies equally well to the current popular hysteria, but to help you I’ve replaced words like “Satanists” with more general terms like “conspirators” [in brackets]:

…Why did psychotherapists and investigators conclude that these fantastic allegations were true? Because at the time, pretty much everyone else in America did…hundreds of children, usually after lengthy sessions with coercive therapists, came forward to say that they…had been [subjected to bizarre mistreatment such as being transported]…to random cities for sexual abuse, or countless other bizarre stories…Media poured attention on the claims…As televangelists prayed for deliverance from Satan’s scourge, talk show “experts” claimed that every imaginable form of abuse was happening on a massive scale in America and that [conspirators were hiding everywhere…media figures] claimed…that more than a million [villains] were plying their evil trade in America right at the very moment…[books about the panic] appeared in libraries and therapists’ offices…“It sounds laughable,” says Debbie Nathan, an investigative reporter who co-wrote Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt about the panic and is now a director for the National Center for Reason and Justice… “Children symbolize the good things about culture, the innocence and purity, the future of the culture,” says Nathan. When a culture feels under threat in some way, fear and anxiety focus on the safety of children…The fear…was perpetuated by both ends of the political spectrum…Most if not all of those involved believed they were acting in the best interests of the children—which meant that any healthy skepticism was interpreted as anti-child. But extensive investigations revealed little to no truth to the…panic…Even so, people still believed…[“experts”]…testified that [organized sexual victimizers] are real, that they are widespread…Common sense and level-headed investigation would have found [these] claims incredible if…panic hadn’t lent a “distorted lens of hysteria” to the picture…

I look forward to reading articles like this about “sex trafficking” hysteria in the late 2030s (there’s a fair chance I’ll still be around; I’d be in my early 70s), but it’s a safe bet that the reporters mocking or marveling at it will be just as oblivious to the absurdity of whatever moral panic is going on then as today’s reporters are to the absurdity of “sex trafficking”.

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As a historian (and witch) I could see how the modern Satanic Abuse panic was an almost mirror-image of the medieval witch hunts. However, no one was prepared to listen when I attempted to point this out. It was as if everyone was being carried along by a tide of unreason that made them accept the most ludicrous allegations.

We were told of live sheep being taken to apparentments in public housing where they were ritually slaughtered. Anyone who is familiar with this kind of accommodation would know there is no way that anyone could get a live sheep up several flights of stairs without someone witnessing the event. Their were talking of rituals (plus bonfires) on a local open space where even at midnight there would always be the possibility of people roaming over the area and witnessing these “rites”.

I’m convinced people believe in “sexual trafficking” because it’s convenient to believe that women only take up this occupation under duress. It needs high-class courtesans/escorts to ‘come out’ but this they are unlikely to do because it would be extremely bad for business.

I didn’t believe in the lies about all the implausible acts the “satanists” carried out then, and I don’t believe in the lies of the cops about the sex trade now, for the same reason. The claims, and numbers, beggar belief. The porkies they tell grow all the time, and if one knows anything of the business they are even less credible.

I don’t really remember televangelists really getting too much involved in this scare. I googled before writing this and didn’t find too much. Christians believe in Satan as much as Global Warmers believe in Global Warming – and each group will point out certain things as evidence that they are correct while ignoring other, very significant facts.

Part of the reason I was a socialist in the early 80’s was due to televangelists – who started to get involved in politics and basically condemned every opposing view as being “satanic”. You cannot have a real democracy when a significant portion of the population believe that the other part are infidels. Witness … Iran.

But … televangelists had little influence on Janet Reno and the Clinton White House. I would argue they had little influence on Reagan and H.W. Bush also. Nancy Reagan was a big believer in astrology wasn’t she? That is considered a witch’s trade by fundamental Christians. Although Regan got a lot of votes from fundamentalists – I really don’t think they influenced him much. When James Watt (a Chrisitan who said he didn’t know too many songs other than “Amazing Grace” and the “Star Spangled Banner”) banned the Beach Boys from performing at the White House … Reagan slammed his decision and said they WOULD play because they are “America’s Band”. He then had Watt presented with a plaster cast of a foot with hole in it – to symbolize Watt shooting himself in the foot. Reagan was cool like that – he could slam you with a smile on his face and make you feel good about it – but still understand that you were wrong.

While the math usually screams at the torture being inflicted on it by the sex trafficking hysterics, they’ve been careful to keep it grounded in the secular. They even keep the crazy, “all penetrative sex is rape” folks off in a corner, selectively quoting from them when it suits them, even though they are kind of the think tank for the modern marketing for the movement.

For me, it’s pretty baffling that Satan got so much credit in the previous ritual abuse panic, mainly because you would think it would turn off a lot of modern minded people. However, I think prosecutors’ philosophy was “go with it, make hay while the sun shines.” I mean, it helped make the career of one of our truly wonderful attorney generals, Ms. Janet Reno. Prosecutors like to rack up kills… not usually much concerned with justice.

I think the longevity of the sex trafficking hysteria will be… longer for a few reasons. For various reasons, a significant proportion of society hates promiscuous women. For religious reasons, or because they are thwarting the political lesbian revolution that would be just around the corner if only women would quit having sex with men, or because men feel they are too weak to avoid temptation (or their wives think they are too weak to avoid temptation). Sex trafficking hysteria makes these banal, selfish reasons more palatable by couching it in terms of rescuing victims rather than suppressing human sexuality (which is what is actually going on).

“For me, it’s pretty baffling that Satan got so much credit in the previous ritual abuse panic, mainly because you would think it would turn off a lot of modern minded people.”

I’ve wondered about this a couple of times, and eventually concluded that the modern sense of religious complacency outside the fundamentalist brigade must be more recent than I thought; perhaps it seems so alien because I’m too young to remember a time when it wasn’t that way.

I may be wrong. Confirmation from someone who was an adult at the time would be nice.

It’s important to keep in mind that it wasn’t Satan who was supposedly sacrificing babies mass-produced by breeders kept entombed for that very purpose; it was Satanists. You could be a person with absolutely no belief in supernatural anything and still accept that people who do believe in the supernatural would do strange things. Indeed, you were more likely to accept that they would if you considered belief in the supernatural to be a bit crazy. It wasn’t until later in the game that you had to accept Satan in order to accept the Satanic Panic.

I’m trying to remember when I rejected the Satanic Panic. I think I always had doubts about parts of it. But when did I reject it altogether?

I think when it became not just something some people (supposedly) did, not just some organized movement, but a huge, international, decades-long (or longer) network which was so amazingly active and yet remained completely hidden for so long and was utterly immune from law enforcement, then I knew that this wasn’t believable. By the time the Geraldo thing happened (which I did watch), if I still had any belief in the whole thing, that destroyed it.

One of the most spectacular of these cases was the subject of an HBO Documentary “Paradise Lost” of the 3 high school boys railroaded by scumbag cops and prosecutors in West Memphis Arkansas. They didn’t even bother to run a professional investigation when 3 grade school boys were found dead in a shocking crime, they just immediately jumped to a “Satanic Ritual” motive and zeroed in on the goth kid that creeped out the local squares. There was no evidence and the whole thing was obviously a sham to anyone with a brain, never the less the kids spent 17 years in prison and had their lives ruined by this delusional insanity of provincial quacks.

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